CELEBRATING SPRING EQUINOX   

March is the fiercest month, named after Mars the Roman God of War for this was when war resumed after winter at the start of the Roman year. Traditionally too it is a powerful time when magical practitioners cast spells for courage, action, passion, overcoming obstacles, new business ventures, for physical strength and independence. But in everyday life too the coming of spring was the occasion when everyone threw out the old rushes of winter; swept away the accumulated dirt of smoky fires and cold dark days huddled under blankets and welcomed the return of the light.

Cleansing festivals

In almost every culture physically cleaning the home was an important prelude to festivals at transition times of the year to mark a new beginning and the Spring Equinox in early calendars usually marked the beginning of the New Year. Some like the Scottish Hogmanay have now moved to January 1 but the principle is the same.

Spring cleaning is associated with the Spring Equinox around March 21 in the northern hemisphere that indicated the beginning of lighter days and warmer weather. This was a logical time for physically cleaning the home after the winter. Indeed the fortnight long Persian or Iranian New Year celebration or Nowruz that begins on the Spring Equinox is preceded by cleaning floors, drapery, furniture and ceilings and is called khooneh takouni which translates as shaking the house. Before the beginning of the annual Jewish Pesach or Passover which occurs in March or April each year, commemorating the freedom of the Israelites from the Egyptians, the home is likewise cleansed.

In contrast in the Southern hemisphere, the Autumn Equinox is fast approaching but some people still have an Equinox clear to avoid entering the winter with unwanted clutter. If wished they can adapt some of these ideas to incorporate the needs of the modern world to be productive and creative 24/7.

Cleaning negativity out of your home "Magical housework"

With increasingly busy lives and modern household appliances, we do not spend the hours our great-grandmothers and even older grandmothers did, working lavender polish into furniture, making soap or scrubbing floors with an herbal infusion. I can remember as a child in industrial Birmingham, pounding the washing and rubbing polish in increasing circles into tables, chairs and dresser, worn smooth with age, until I really could see my face in them.

I have no illusions about the hardships of earlier times. But in using the old ways along with our very necessary vacuum cleaners and shampooers and where possible buying more natural herbal products rather than chemically packed ones we can tune into the physical connection of purifying the home in a deep instinctive way.

Psychic Vacuuming

The modern equivalent of the broom of our ancestors is the vacuum cleaner.

Before you clean up, sprinkle fine lavender, dried rose petals or a flower scented talcum powder (even one of the floral floor freshening powders if you can get one with natural ingredients) on floors. Then vacuum up the petals and the floor first in anticlockwise and then clockwise circles to remove not only dust and dirt but any lingering unhelpful energies or lethargy. As you vacuum clockwise, picture light flowing into the floor and carpets and any furnishings you cleaned, being filled with fresh spring like energies.

Alban Eiler, Ostara or the Spring Equinox, from around 20th March till 22 March

Focus of the period: Fertility and positive life changes, new beginnings and opportunities, new flowering love, for initiating creative ventures, travel, house moves, clearing what is no longer needed in your life; anything to do with conception and pregnancy,  children and young people, mothers, healing, Spring cleaning, welcoming  the winds of change; rituals and empowerments to cleanse the seas and air of pollution, for new peace-making initiatives of all kinds, also to encourage major changes in attitude towards international, national, local and family issues.

Key words: Initiation, signs of growth

Emphasis of festival:  Rebirth/hatching (as of eggs or plans)

Energies of the season: Balanced, as day and night are equal on the Equinox day. Its alter ego festival is the Autumn Equinox around September 22

Symbols: Eggs, especially painted ones, feathers, spring flowers or leaves a sprouting pot of seeds, pottery rabbits and birds and anything made of dough or clay

Tree:  Birch

Incenses, flowers and herbs: Celandine, cinquefoil, crocus, daffodil, honeysuckle, hyacinth, lemon, primroses, sage, tansy and thyme and violets

Candle colours:  Yellow and green

Crystals: Sparkling yellow crystals, such as citrine, golden beryl and rutilated quartz, also lemon and apple green chrysoprase and aventurine

Festival Foods: Decorated boiled eggs, chocolate eggs and rabbits, hot cross buns or small cakes with pastry crosses on for the old astrological sign of the earth mother, lamb, Simnel (marzipan topped cakes)

Angel of the festival: Raphael, Archangel of the Dawn, the East, the spring and of healing. He carries a golden vial of medicine, with a traveller’s staff, food to nourish travellers and is dressed in the colours of early morning sunlight, with a beautiful green healing ray emanating from his halo

Goddess of the festival: The Norse goddess Ostara who opened the gates of spring on Equinox morning and whose magical animal the white hare dashed across the lingering snow in Northern climes promising Ostara was on her way. Her white magical hare led to the tradition in some lands of chocolate Easter rabbits and it was the hare that brought eggs for the children or hid them for them to find. Rabbits were also a symbol of fertility as they began to reproduce

Painted fresh eggs, again a sign of Spring when the hens began to lay in natural light are another ancient fertility symbol and were painted and placed on the shrines of Ostara

In the Christian tradition March 25 is the festival of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary when Gabriel appeared telling her she would bear Christ.

The Place on the Wheel of the Year  

Alban Eiler means in Gaelic the Light of the Earth that returns after the winter and the time of sowing begins in earnest. Young animals are thriving and the early spring flowers in bloom.

The Maiden Goddess in pre Christian tradition mates with the young virile triumphal Horned and wild woodland God to conceive the child of light who will be born on the Mid Winter Solstice the following December.

The Light and Dark brothers fight and the Light twin kills his brother, so henceforward the days will be longer than the night. The Dark twin descends to the Underworld or the womb of the mother, like the seeds planted in the earth, to await rebirth.

The Equinox on other traditions

The festival is also associated with the  resurrection of light and of Christ and in the pre Christian tradition gods such as the Greek Attis, indeed, in some myths, this is the birth of the Sun King. It is said on the Spring Equinox morning the sun dances in the water at sunrise, an association transferred to angels.

In the early Christian tradition, candles were extinguished on Easter Eve. The Paschal Candle was lit from the Nyd or festival fire which was kindled outside churches using an oaken spindle from nine different kinds of wood.

Sometimes the effigy of a Judas Man was burned. Charred sticks were taken from the fire and placed on newly kindled home fires or kept through the year as protection against thunderstorms.

St. Cyril of Jerusalem described the profusion of light on Easter Eve as being as bright as day, and Constantine the Great made the Easter Eve celebrations even more dazzling by placing lights not only in basilicas, but in streets and squares. Homes were also illuminated with candles in every window to welcome the resurrection.

Eggs were painted and dedicated to the Virgin Mary in Germany, Eastern and Western Europe, parts of the Mediterranean, Russia and in Mexico and South America. In Poland it is said that Mary painted eggs in bright colours to delight her infant and some Polish mothers continue the custom.

The Equinox comes to a supermarket near you

In the modern world the old and new have mixed. For example Hot Cross buns are still popular in England right through the Easter period or even earlier in supermarket bakeries. They predate Christianity by many centuries. The buns, marked with the cross symbolising the resurrection of Jesus, in earlier times signified the old astrological cross, symbol of the earth mother. They or similar special small cakes were eaten at the Spring Equinox around March 21 (in the northern hemisphere), so offering the protection of the Earth Mother and promising a summer of plentiful resources.

The Ancient Egyptians marked small round cakes with ox or cow horns, sacred to the mother goddesses Isis and Hathor at their springtime celebrations. The practice of eating special small cakes with crosses on them at the time of the spring festival may have started in Ancient Rome. Evidence comes in the form of two small loaves marked with crosses that were discovered preserved in lava in the ruins of the Herculaneum, a city in southwestern Italy that was destroyed by a volcano in 79 C.E.  The custom however probably came to England with the Anglo Saxons who made and ate small cakes on the Spring Equinox in honour of Eostre, the Goddess of spring who gave her name to Easter. When the Anglo Saxons were Christianised during the 7^th and 8^th centuries the custom was easily transferred to the new religion. In Christian tradition, hot cross buns made on Good Friday were hung in sailors’ homes and churches near the sea to keep sailors from drowning.

Ways of Marking the Festival in the Modern world

Work either on the Equinox or Easter Sunday which is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox, the only surviving Christian lunar related festival 

• Boil eggs in pastel vegetable food colouring or after boiling decorate them with non toxic marker pens, with flowers, Mother Goddess spirals, birds and bees and offer them on a basket of spring flowers and leaves on the breakfast table. The family can help but of course with young children make sure the decorated eggs are peeled and well washed before eating

or

• For increasing your personal fertility if you wish to conceive a child or to launch a creative venture such as selling paintings or crafts or getting a book published prick an egg with a needle or large silver pin and take out all the white and yellow on the Equinox or Easter morning. Then carefully cut it in half and leave the shell halves open for the sun or light to shine on them

• Leave the egg shell on an indoor window ledge until the first night of the crescent moon after the Spring Equinox or the first crescent after Easter Sunday.

• Then split the shell and place a tiny moonstone or worry doll in one half, leaving it on the window ledge until the next Full Moon. Place the silver pin or needle in the other half and also leave it on the window ledge.

• On the night of the Full Moon, prick the moonstone very gently with the silver pin and rest the pin  on top of the moonstone in one half of the egg. Name what it is you need

• The next morning close the egg and wrap up egg, pin and moonstone until the moon leaves the sky. Then you should bury them and repeat the ritual with a new egg, moonstone and pin. This can help not only for conceiving babies but also for re-establishing the natural rhythms of your life to bring any new venture to birth.

or

• Spring clean your life as well as your home. Answer any correspondence that is piling up. Deal with unavoidable issues. Change your routine so that you rise half an hour earlier and can enjoy the growing light, perhaps walking to work or sitting in the spring sunshine on your balcony or in your garden. Initiate those projects you always meant to by first clearing out the clutter of old commitments or activities that you no longer enjoy.

• Visit a clear river or lake on Equinox morning or Easter Sunday and look at any light dancing or moving on the surface of the water. Throw a tiny crystal or white stone into the light place in the water and, as it splashes, blink and you will see externally or in your mind’s eye a momentary image framed in light that will help you to plan your future path.

• Make Spring Equinox or Easter morning energising and healing water by leaving it in a clear dish from dawn or when you wake until noon or when you break for lunch. Use this for revitalising office plants or sickly house plants; put a few drops in spaces, polluted water courses and on waste land or near abandoned buildings to encourage new growth in places that are no longer beautiful or useful. Put a small sealed bottle of the water near the front door if you are trying to sell your house and on top of job applications or manuscripts, legal or tax papers you are sending for a positive response.

• Plant in the ground the appropriate seedlings, naming the results you hope for within six months. Rename those plans every time you tend the plants. If they do not thrive, plant more naming again or adapting the earlier plans.

• Burn an ear of dried grass or corn in a candle set in a bucket of soil to symbolise the traditional Spring Equinox corn figure woven from the previous year’s harvest or the effigy of a straw Judas man in Christian times. The ashes were scattered on the field to ensure the successful growth of the seeds. You can scatter your soil containing the burned corn or grass on to your garden or use it for planting an indoor flower to ensure what you gained from the previous year grows even more in the year ahead

• As close to the Equinox or Easter Sunday as possible visit a place you have always wanted to go for a day near your home that perhaps you always drive past and say We must go there.’

• Make a cake and mark it with a diagonal cross for Mother Earth. Invite people you have been meaning to contact for ages or you know would welcome an invitation and share the abundance.

• Buy a new item of clothing (the traditional Easter bonnet) or organize a clothes exchange with friends.

I hope you get lots of chocolate eggs. If not buy yourself one and enjoy it twice as much as I will.

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